Whether your understanding of a mentor was shaped by movies (Yoda, Mr. Miyagi, Gandalf the Grey); literature (Merlin and King Arthur, Dan Cody and James Gatz/Jay Gatsby); history (Socrates and Plato, Aristotle and Alexander the Great, Lord Melbourne and Queen Victoria); or from personal experience, the principle is the same:
A mentor-mentee relationship develops when the mentor has valuable knowledge, life experience and/or wisdom to share with the mentee that can positively impact his or her life.
In the same way, the principle behind Northcentral University’s One-to-One teaching model, based on the Oxford Model, is the assertion that faculty pass down valuable feedback and experiences to their students through substantive faculty-student interaction. In other words, the One-to-One interaction that results by pairing one faculty member with one student in each course at NCU creates a richer learning experience by promoting applied experiential learning (act, reflect, conceptualize, apply), and ensures that faculty influence learning within Northcentral’s online delivery method.
The Oxford Model is deeply rooted in British higher education and has since inspired practice all over the world. Today, it is reflected in what is often referred to as Oxford Tutorials. Tutorials at Oxford University commonly consist of one to three students meeting regularly with a Tutor (Mentor) to discuss the week’s assignment. The Tutor then guides the discussion by investigating each student’s grasp of the assignment, “pushing him or her to think through topics in much greater depth than is the norm in a lecture or classroom setting.”
NCU has adopted its own version of this model to benefit students and enhance our online delivery method. In our One-to-One teaching modality, faculty members facilitate learning through inquiry-based interaction and feedback that challenges students to continually reflect on their own learning and application. Without classrooms and lectures to otherwise guide faculty-student interaction, this One-to-One teaching is crucial to the NCU education experience. As a result, guidelines have been established to assess quality and consistency of faculty feedback to ensure that we are doing everything we can to support the success of our students.
